‘My day in a Liverpool alley with 35 drag queens’

In an unexpectedly hot day in May, Magnus Hastings is in a back alley behind a gay bar in Liverpool with 35 local drag queens.

It’s a long way from home for the Los Angeles-based photographer, usually more accustomed to shooting in studios with big name LGBT celebrities, but he’s doing it in the name of his favourite art form.

Two months later and the photographs from his day in the alley – which he and several of the queens taking part jokingly call his “initiation into the Liverpool gay scene” – are now at the heart of a “one-of-a-kind” exhibition opening at the start of the city’s Pride celebrations.

Queen by Magnus Hastings, at the Walker Art Gallery, features some of the biggest names from the international drag scene – Jinkx Monsoon, Shea Coulee, Bob the Drag Queen, to name but a few.

But during a private viewing, it’s the back-alley images of the locals rather than the stars of Ru Paul’s Drag Race who are drawing the crowds.

“I wanted this exhibition to be about the art of drag; not just about a TV show. I’ve never wanted to [photograph] people just because they’ve been on Drag Race, it’s about who inspires me and who I get inspiration from.”

Having won series four of Drag Race UK, Danny Beard, who uses they/them pronouns, knows all too well the benefits of their work being being given a prominent platform.

“The first time I ever did drag was at Liverpool Pride a long time ago. I looked absolutely awful and I called myself Katie Halfprice, but I just fell in love with the empowering experience that it is,” they told BBC News.

Fast forward to the present day and their drag has made them a household name. They‘re regularly on Prime Time TV, have their own show on BBC Radio One, and are now the poster girl for the Hastings exhibition.

Their face is plastered across the city, and on a 10ft advertising banner at the front of the gallery, just yards from the spot where it all began at Liverpool Pride.

For Danny Beard, though, the real magic of Hastings’ work is about championing the diversity of local drag queens who haven’t been given – or don’t want – a platform like Ru Paul’s Drag Race.

One of those local queens is Pretentious Dross, who describes herself as “Liverpool’s arthouse witch, masher of lips and prancer of stages”.

Speaking to BBC News while wearing pointed elf ears, huge jewels and a black Thierry Mugler vampire dress, she says she hopes the exhibition will help change people’s idea of what drag is.

“There’s a misconception that drag is just people doing hyper-femme, gowns, wigs, make-up, that sort of thing.

“What these images show is that there are as many different ways to do drag as there are people in the world.”

Hastings himself appears in just one of the photographs, alongside Australian drag queen Courteny Act.

Despite his love for the art, he’s never stepped in front of the camera in drag.

“I just love drag – when I was younger I used to steal my sister’s clothes, and shoes and I’d run around naked with my mum’s feather boa lip-syncing to songs, but I was sort of ashamed of it and I locked it down,” he tells BBC News.

“But for me, my work is my way of doing drag. I’m not an observer, I’m a participant.

“It’s how I express my little drag child through the work I do.”

Queen by Magnus Hastings is at Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool 27 July – 25 August 2024